Reminiscing Bulletwounds
by MintSauce
Summary: Maddy doesn't really understand why it's Ian Gallagher who can get her dad to smile, but she thinks she's starting to. Sequel to Dead Man Walking.


**Sequel to Dead Man Walking**

Maddy can remember being about seven years old and asking her mother if she could have a baby brother or sister maybe one day. And her mum had just tipped her head back and laughed, she'd just laughed like that was the funniest joke in the world, one hand curling around her belly and tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes. "Yeah, that's never going to happen," she said when she'd finally stopped laughing long enough to get words out.

And Maddy can remember her dad walking in through the front door at that moment and her mother had just laughed again, but it sounded almost spiteful at that moment, cruel. Maddy hadn't understood then, hadn't understood why there was no chance of her having a sibling when everyone in their neighbourhood seemed to have kids like they were going out of fashion.

Then as she'd grown she'd listened to kids at school telling stories of them walking in on their parents fucking and Maddy didn't know why her parents were different. She didn't know why they never touched each other, why when their skin did accidentally brush her dad would flinch away like he'd been burned. She didn't understand still why it was some sort of joke, the idea of them having another kid, but she understood more why they wouldn't want to then. She understood that her parent's didn't like each other.

And when she'd told Liam that, he'd just laughed and said, "A lot of people's parents don't like each other, Mads, but they still fuck anyway." She'd never seen her parents fuck though and she'd pressed her ear against the door to their room at night just because she wanted to convince herself they were normal in some way, but all she ever heard were her dad's soft snores or him telling her mum to fuck off when she tried to start a conversation.

They didn't talk though so she didn't know why she'd ever expected them to do anything else.

She could remember the first time that she'd ever really been happy to have Mickey Milkovich as her father though. Could remember the day she'd come home with tears in her eyes because some of the older guys from school had stolen her backpack and her phone as she was walking home. Her dad had walked into the house and taken one look at her curled up on the end of the couch with her arms wrapped around her knees and asked, "Who did what?"

She'd told him, hiccupping through her words and he walked out without saying anything else and returned a little over an hour later and tossed her bag by her feet and her phone into her waiting hands. She didn't know what to think of the blood smeared across his knuckles, not when even that seemed to have taken the dead look out of his eyes.

But she did smirk the next day at school when she heard from Liam that someone had beaten the shit out of some of the older guys in their school. Apparently one of them – a football player to top it all off – had had all of the fingers on his left hand broken and another one of them had a broken leg. She saw them two weeks later and the bruises had only just started to turn yellow and fade on their faces and they flinched away when their eyes met.

That night when her dad walked through the door was the only time she could ever remember hugging him. He didn't hug back when she wrapped her arms around his middle and she pretended that she couldn't smell the stench of alcohol rolling off him in waves. He just stood stock still, frozen like she'd somehow hit his pause button. He nodded like he understood though when she let him go and they didn't say anything more about it.

The only time that Maddy really felt like the world had dropped out from underneath her feet was when she walked into the Alibi to try and help Liam track down his father Frank and found her grandfather instead. She didn't really know that much about Terry aside from the fact he was a twisted fuck, a neo-Nazi and her Dad couldn't ever stand to breathe the same air as him. He'd been in jail more times than she could count, had been there really for more than half of her life and so she didn't really know him. Didn't particularly want to know him either, because when so many people hated a single person, it generally didn't give you the desire to get to know them.

She stood at the end of the bar, hovering there a little awkwardly whilst Liam moved off to talk to his brother Ian about Frank. She didn't really know what to think of Ian, didn't know if she liked him or not. She didn't know what to think of the only person who had managed to make Mickey Milkovich smile and actually mean it, the person who'd managed to achieve something that his wife and daughter never had been able to.

She always smiled in greeting when Ian waved at her, but she hadn't spoken to him since that day at the Gallagher house, because she couldn't think what any of it _meant_. She didn't understand anything. Felt like maybe she never had.

When Terry came over to her, she tensed up automatically because she didn't know a way out of this conversation and she certainly didn't want to have to stand there and have to think of something to say to him. As it happened though, he was more than happy to just talk _at_ her and she didn't hear a single word he said, letting it go on a few minutes before she mumbled, "I um… I have to go," and started to turn away.

"Don't fucking turn your back on me," he spat at her, fingers curling around her arm as he jerked her close to him. She could smell stale cigarettes and beer on his breath and it almost made her gag. "You wouldn't even be in this shithole of a world if I hadn't made your dad fuck that worthless cunt you call a mother."

His lips were twisted in disgust and maybe he said something more, Maddy didn't know. Because her brain had just gone blank and all she could think was, _hold on, wait what!_

They'd been taught in school that if you _made_ someone have sex, it was sex they didn't want and if it was sex they didn't want then that meant rape. So Terry had virtually just told her that he'd forced her mother to rape his father, or maybe it had been the other way around. Except, she wasn't an idiot or that naïve and she knew her mum used to be a whore, so it was more likely her dad being made to fuck her mum.

Which made her.

Which just. . ._ fuck_.

_How the hell was she supposed to process that?_

Although, suddenly all those times her dad would look at her mum like the sight of her haunted him, all those times that he would flinch away from her mother's touch like it physically hurt him. It all made sense. Except, a man being raped wasn't something that really computed in her brain, her _dad_ getting raped wasn't something that made sense.

She just froze, staring blankly at Terry and only jolted out of her trance-like state when a fist connected with Terry's jaw. The older man obviously hadn't seen it coming judging by the way that he toppled backwards, letting go of Maddy's arm as he fell. He lay sprawled on the floor and Maddy watched as Ian landed a kick to his ribs.

"You're a worthless piece of fucking shit," Ian spat at him, kicking Terry in the jaw when he rolled over and tried to push to his feet, "And you don't get to say that sort of shit to her." He spat on the floor by Terry's hand, kicking him one last time. "You don't get to say fucking anything to her."

Then everything was blurring through the tears falling down Maddy's cheeks and she rubbed at them furiously, jumping a little when an arm wrapped around her shoulder. "It's me, it's Ian," he said low in her ear, "I can explain I promise, just come on."

So she let Ian lead her out of the Alibi and when his arm fell from around her, she followed him as he walked until they ended up at the old baseball diamond. Ian walked right into the centre and sat down, legs crossed and his fingers immediately starting to pick at the browning grass. He smiled at her when she sat slowly down beside him.

"I remember when your dad and I hung out here once," he told her, voice soft in the quiet of the baseball pitch, "He was avoiding Terry, something about eating the last of the bacon, I dunno, but we came her after work and smoked a few joints and then lay on our backs trying to see how many dicks we could find in the stars." She watched as his lips curved up into a smile at the memory and if her Dad had ever really spoken to her, then she wondered if he would have told her stories like this. About Ian.

"We must have stayed out here for hours," Ian told her, "Only moved when the sprinklers came on and Mickey started cursing up a storm because it was fucking up the gel in his hair." He laughed lowly under his breath, "He used to become a complete fucking sissy like that when he was high enough."

A few weeks ago, Maddy wouldn't have thought it would have been possible for her dad to be like that, she wouldn't have been able to imagine it. But ever since she'd walked out of her room to see the way that her dad's face lit up when he laughed, she could see how it was possible.

"What did Terry mean when he said that?" she asked, hating how dead her voice sounded when she spoke, "About my mum and dad?"

Ian's face tensed up a little, almost like a grimace before he let out a long breath and scratched at the back of his neck. "It's not my right to tell you secrets about your dad," he told her, picking at the grass again and looking at her sideways through his lashes, "But what Terry said isn't untrue."

Maddy flinched at the same time as Ian did, but she admired the fact that he didn't try to take back his words.

"Terry forced your mum and dad to have sex, that bit's true," he told her, "Terry found something out about Mickey and thought it would fix him, thought that making him have sex with and then marry your mother would make Mickey everything that he wanted him to be."

He cringed and Maddy wondered what Ian was seeing behind his closed eyelids every time he blinked. Was it memories of war or was it memories of things far much worse.

"You can't think that means he hates you though," Ian told her, staring right into her eyes in a way that made it impossible for her to think he was lying. She didn't think she'd ever seen anyone look so open or so goddamn imploring before in her life. And she could see maybe why people could like him, why her father could want to spend time with him.

Ian Gallagher seemed like everything that was the opposite of her dad. Calm, collected, patient, kind. But Maddy could imagine that Ian wasn't the sort of person who brought out the worst parts of her dad. She couldn't imagine him actively trying to anger him. In fact, she could imagine Ian Gallagher having something of a calming effect on her dad, like an opposite's attract sort of thing.

And maybe that was why it was only Ian that could get him to laugh.

"You called him a dead man walking when we first met," Ian carried on, not seeming at all discouraged by the fact that she wasn't saying anything, "But the thing about Mick is that even when he looks blank, he watches everything." He smiled, just ever so slightly. "He was telling me about how good you are in school, how smart you are, was telling me how it's fucking typical you wound up dating a Gallagher of all people," he said, a soft sort of laughter in his voice, "He says you can draw really well too and that you're fluent in Russian and English both so don't think he doesn't notice you."

He looked at her and smiled, honest and open and true, "He does care; he's just never been very good at showing that sort of stuff."

Maddy rubbed at her eyes when she felt that familiar prickling sensation, because she'd gone her whole life thinking that her dad didn't know or even care to know a single thing about her. It was a weird thought to think that he knew all sorts of things; that he did care past beating people up that hurt her.

"Can you tell me another story about him or something?" she asked, chewing on her bottom lip slightly and tucking a piece of hair behind her ear, "I want to know that side of my dad, but my Aunt Mandy only ever really talks about him beating people up."

Ian smirked. "Well he did used to be the neighbourhood terror," he told her, "Did Mandy tell you about the time he got shot over a Snickers bar?"

Her eyes widened slightly as she shook her head and Ian laughed.

"Yeah he used to shoplift from the store I worked at, the Kash and Grab and the owner Kash was a complete pussy except for the one time Mickey came in and stole a Snickers bar," he said, rubbing a hand through his hair, "Kash shot him in the leg, but Mickey wound up going to juvie for the shoplifting anyway, stabbed a kid with a plastic fork over Jell-O when he was in there." He laughed under his breath, "You don't come between your dad and Jell-O, he gets fucking scary with the stuff!"

Maddy laughed with him, eyes still a little wide because she couldn't imagine her dad doing stuff like that. Stuff like getting shot or being protective over Jell-O of all things.

"He really got shot?" she asked, tucking her knees up under her chin and staring at Ian eagerly.

Ian laughed loudly and nodded and his entire face was lit up in a way that Maddy envied. Nobody else she knew had ever really looked that carefree and happy when they laughed. "Twice," he told her, grinning, "An old lady shot him in the ass once when we were robbing her house."

His smile turned almost fond even as he was laughing at the memory and Maddy watched the way that his bright green eyes shone in the dim light of the baseball diamond. "In the ass!" she half-shouted, feeling like her eyes were about to bug out of her head any second, "No way my dad got shot in the ass!"

"Oh he did, trust me," Ian chuckled, pulling a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and lighting one up. He smile around the filter as he took a drag, blowing smoke out of his nostrils and offering it to her as he said, "You should have seen the way that he leapt into the air when it happened, like something out a cartoon."

Ian kept telling her stories about her dad until tiredness prickled at her eyes and they'd smoked through the entire packet of cigarettes and Maddy definitely knew now why her dad could spend time with Ian. He just had something about him that made the world seem so easy for just a moment, like nothing else could touch them because his easy-going attitude was just infectious. She knew she didn't understand all of it, but she understood a little more why of all people it was Ian Gallagher who had managed to get her dad to really smile.

And after Ian had walked her to her door and she walked in to find her dad in the kitchen with a beer in his hand, she didn't even hesitate, just walked over and wrapped her arms around his middle, hugging him just like she had done when he'd beaten those boys up for her. And he froze just like the last time, tensing up from the moment her arms went around him, but Maddy didn't take it to heart.

She just pressed her cheek into her dad's grubby tank top and breathed in the scent of sweat and lime body-wash and cigarette smoke. And she realised it had been a while since she'd last seen him shit faced drunk.

He stared at her and frowned when she pulled back, but she just grinned at him and asked, "So hey Dad, do you still have scars from when you got shot in the ass?"

He blinked, his expression freezing before it melted into a scowl that didn't quite seem to reach his eyes. "Fucking Gallagher," he growled out, grinding his teeth together and snorting out a breath before shouldering his way out of the house.

Maddy just tipped her head back and laughed, thinking that maybe Ian Gallagher's presence in her life wasn't so bad after all.


End file.
